TO #The56 I say, dudes, be chill.
If there's one thing I understand, it's being overwhelmed by excitement. A little jig in the supermarket, a wee whoop on the bus. The 56 new SNP MPs haven't only won their seats: they've won their seats in a landslide victory, ousting a clutch of long-serving heavy names. They're justifiably thrilled.
The reason for the thrill, I'm going to take a guess, is because they've achieved a long-held ambition to take a seat in the halls of power and attempt to divert that power for the good of, the ultimate benefit of, constituents who are relying on their best endeavours.
Unfortunately, if you follow a selection of our new MPs on Twitter, it looks more like they're thrilled because they've been incarcerated in a backwater for a time too long to mention and have finally been allowed out on a revel.
There they are, posing at the airport with matching tartan accessories. There they are taking a selfie on the London underground. There they on a plane. And eating chips outside Westminster. And in the chambers mugging on the benches. And mugging behind the Dispatch Box. There's an awful lot of mugging.
It's the sort of mugging young people do when they're off on school trip. It's the mugging of visitors taking a 2pm guided tour.
Mhairi Black, in particular, has been pilloried for early tweets that cloak her not in glory. Her timeline, from a few years back, has been dug out and poured over. In it she makes crude remarks about nuns, drinking and football. But who among us hasn't had a negative thought about nuns and taken to twitter to post it in expletive-dotted fashion? Ms Black, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, needs the benefit of the doubt extended to her. If Twitter had existed when I was a teenager I'm quite sure I would cringe the very marrow from my bones on rereading some of the daftery posted therein.
Although nuns would have been safe, and there would have been no swearing as my auntie follows me, there would be nothing I could nowadays take pride in. Her current twitter presence, however, still doesn't set quite the right tone - posing with canteen chips, for one.
The SNP wants to position itself as the "new politics", as a challenge to the establishment, as apart from fusty traditions, a cool breeze blowing away the hot air of Westminster. Mix that with the instant action, click-bait nature of Twitter and a selection of MPs are coming across slightly country cousin down to visit the big city boys.
Sadly, that's rather what the naysayers want. Here's a quote from the London Evening Standard: "They might be mixing with the Metropolitan elite but they shouldn't forget where they came from. Even if that place is Glasgow and they'd really, really like to."
Substance matters over style, of course it does. But if you mean business you have to act business. Most of us would be, at the least, sternly spoken to if we took silly photographs undermining our professionalism during office hours. Some of us are expected to be upholding high standards of behaviour at all times. This group not only has a job of work to do, they're representing the country entire.
The SNP group has an excellent example to work to: Nicola Sturgeon has Twitter absolutely nailed. You would not see her mugging, nor posing with a plate of chips. There's no reason her politicians can't follow suit.
SNP MPs, you won these seats in an election, not a lottery. So act like you belong there because, after all, you do.
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